Aging on a Different Course

By Jane Hickie, James F. Dausch, and Edward B. Vinson

In this installment in our design for aging guest writer series, Jane Hickie, James F. Dausch, and Edward Bennett Vinson present a novel opportunity for helping to address the issues of aging in suburbia: golf course redevelopment.

The vast majority of Americans over 65 live in the suburbs where neither homes nor neighborhoods were designed with an older population in mind. The functional limitations that come with aging may make suburban, auto-dependent life difficult, but older people do not want to move. Rather than requiring them to relocate, the suburbs should adapt to this aging population, offering more walkable neighborhoods with smaller housing near services and amenities. Because changing zoning laws to include multi-family housing and retail in a single-family neighborhood can be quite a challenge, it is important to target locations where such infill development may be welcome.

This proposal is to redevelop failing suburban golf courses. The recent economic recession and a flawed culture around the game of golf itself offer an unprecedented opportunity to reorient the suburbs on a scale that addresses the need for appropriate homes and neighborhoods in an aging America.

Aging in Suburbia
“In 2007, 10 million of the 23 million older households, or 46 percent, were located in the suburbs” (1). Single family homes and suburban neighborhoods were not designed for people who may have functional limitations related to vision, hearing, cognition, and mobility as they age. “Epidemiologists are reporting a link between suburban living and physical health. They find that older people walk less frequently when they live in lower density neighborhoods that are more distant from shopping, restaurants, and other services. Absent or poorly designed and maintained sidewalks (e.g., uneven or interrupted walkways), poor street lighting, absent benches, dangerous crossings, and hill terrains also limit their mobility as pedestrians”(2).

With 80 million people soon to be over 65, the critical question is: how easy will our society make it for older people to optimize their independence and well-being? Most people prefer to age in place (3) and the determination to remain in one’s home actually increases with age (4). With a move, social networks and connections with familiar shops and services are lost. Friends are distant. A move may require changing one’s place of worship and leaving acquaintances at community cafes, bowling alleys, libraries, or community gardens.

Rather than asking older people to move, the suburbs should change to accommodate their longtime residents. There should be a variety of safe ways for suburban residents to reach their destinations—including walking, transit, and automobiles. There should also be greater diversity in suburban housing, including more affordable multi-family options. In Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbia, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson argue that suburban residents want to stay in their suburban homes, and that defunct commercial sites offer redevelopment opportunities for walkable urban lifestyles (5). They note that grayfield retrofits “facilitate walking instead of driving, social interaction instead of isolation, and the health benefits associated with improved air quality and water quality and tempered thermal conditions”(6).

The simultaneous collapse in the value of homes and golf courses may make such suburban redevelopment, retrofitting, and regreening possible on an unprecedented scale. The decline in the economy presents an opportunity to fundamentally “rethink suburban housing: to make it responsive not to dated demographics and wishful economics but rather to the actual needs of a diversifying and dynamic population” (7). The game of golf is suffering not only from the Great Recession, but also from outdated service, outreach, design, and marketing. Many golf communities have been forced into bankruptcy, or very close to it, by a number of factors including the economic recession, overbuilding, poor business planning for the golf course, and declining interest in golf (8).

Golf as a Real Estate Amenity
“The past two decades saw an unprecedented boom in the building of high-end golf courses linked to luxury real estate communities. Betting that aging boomers would embrace golf as their pastime of choice, the National Golf Foundation set a goal of building, ‘A Course a Day’ beginning in 1988. Real-estate developers teamed up with top-name golf course architects, building exclusive communities adjacent to courses, and requiring homeowners to pay annual club dues—sometimes even if they didn’t play. Then, in a moment of spectacularly bad timing, both the golf industry and the real-estate market took a nose-dive at once”(9). “It was a ‘perfect storm,’” said David Hueber, former President and CEO of the National Golf Foundation, who estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 (of the 16,000 in the United States) will be in financial danger if the model does not change (10). According to the National Golf Foundation, more than four million golfers have been lost to the game since 2000. The number of female and junior golfers have dropped 23 percent and 25 percent, respectively, over the last five years. Golf participation in the United States has fallen to levels not seen in 25 years (11). “The model of a country club is gone forever,” said Syd Kitson, who is recasting a golf community with a village center in Naples, Florida (12).

The longer courses built during the 1990s are too expensive (both financially and environmentally) to maintain, take too long to play, and are too difficult for men or women who are average and aging golfers. There is significant excess golf course capacity, reducing the premium paid for golf course living and further undercutting already diminished housing values. Some homeowners are serving as maintenance staff on their golf courses to save on increasing expense (13).

Redevelopment of Suburban Golf Courses
Redevelopment could provide solutions for the financial problems that many homeowners associations and golf course operators are struggling to address through infill housing and retail more suitable for an older population. A golf course will average 150 to 180 acres while a mixed-use development with a multi-family housing cluster could average 25 to 40 acres. Reshaping a golf course can create land parcels on the periphery of the course, where commercial, professional, medical, institutional, and multi-family residential facilities might be developed.

There are opportunities nationwide to adaptively reconfigure an existing golf course for a new public and private mixed-use project that retains much of the acreage of the course. “(The goal is to) find a way to keep the course open, find a vehicle to fund the improvements to make the facility competitive, create a little more tax base and create some development opportunities that previously never existed. Repurposing—whether 10 or 100 acres—could keep architects and courses in business” (14).

Bill Amick, Past President of ASGCA, redesigned the North Olmsted Golf Course to an executive course. This course redesign freed land for the Shore West Company’s Viewpoint housing development. The course was turned over to the Northern Ohio Golf Association where the Return to Golf program flourishes. The mission of Return to Golf is “to restore physically challenged individuals to the greatest degree of independence possible by combining golf with rehabilitation-based fitness and conditioning” (15).

Bobby Weed Golf Design dramatically transformed The Deltona Club in Deltona, Florida, that had 200 single-family homes surrounding the declining golf course. Seventeen acres were carved out for up to 300 age-restricted condominiums. Since renovation, the golf course has been profitable, with a positive net operating income (16).

In San Antonio, Texas, developers are planning The Valor Club at Pecan Valley, which would include 45 acres of park space, including a 15-acre lake. The re-dedicated golf course will be adapted to comply with ADA accessibility standards and housing will include a continuing care retirement campus and first-class apartments (17).

Successful adaptive reuse engages the intellect and open-minded effort of all parties with actual or potential vested interests. It will also require a talented creative team to address the typical risks of development—site acquisition, entitlement/public approval, site/land development, building construction, and financing availability. A series of important questions must be answered in every case.

Overcoming intense neighborhood resistance to a change in use and zoning can only occur when a number of factors converge and even so, only when the community and its leaders are persuaded that many more benefits are offered. The challenge of this effort cannot be overstated and requires that “architects, landscape architects and urban designers collaborate with developers, builders, economists, engineers, ecologists, homeowners and homebuyers” (18).

Conclusion
Consumer research shows that today’s fifty-five plus market strongly values proximity to shopping, nature, and their children; low-maintenance and energy-efficient homes; walking/jogging paths; and the amenities associated with a village center. They are eager to remain engaged by volunteering and continuing to learn in their multi-generational communities, stay physically active, and be able to safely walk to a mix of uses (19).

Reconfiguring golf courses to reduce their length and make them easier to play, less expensive to maintain, and more environmentally sustainable can create opportunities for infill development of village centers. A village center infill development could include a variety of uses. All could be accessible by walking, golf carts, transit, and/or automobiles. Senior-accessible housing could be clustered around the clubhouse with apartments with elevators or low-rise bungalows. A new village center would provide a nearby place to move as age dictates and also benefit community economics by increasing the numbers of residents to share in assessments, taxes, and dues.

Suburban redevelopment on a scale to serve more than 80 million Baby Boomers, who are aging, requires a diverse and innovative professional team. Reimagining suburban golf courses for new housing and amenities is at the intersection of public policy and design, zoning innovation and design, construction innovation and design, neighborhood activism and design, and cultural perception and design (20). No society has previously experienced the longevity, affluence, or patterns of suburban development that the United States enjoys. Golf, like other lifetime sports, can make a positive contribution to an aging America, as can the suburbs, if both the game of golf and the suburbs are transformed by creatively adapting to a changing world.

James F. Dausch is a Principal in Resolutions Real Estate Advisors, LLC. His career in real estate includes The Rouse Company, The Mills Corporation, and the New Communities Administration at HUD. He holds an LL.B. from Columbia Law School.

Edward Bennett Vinson

Edward Bennett Vinson has developed and managed real estate nationally and internationally for over 30 years. He is a Principal in Resolutions Real Estate Advisors, LLC, and resides in Boca Raton, Florida.